Why we moved to Costa Rica and Why We're Leaving. Pros and Cons List of living in Costa Rica.

we're there happy trails I'm Matt I'm Erica our daughter Shanti and we travel the globe fulltime today's video is to talk to you about how we moved to Costa Rica and also why we're leaving to give you a little backstory for the last like four years we've been building school buses traveling them all across the United States especially during Co worked out perfectly for us then we spent some time in Mexico and Erica has done tons of International traveling that was our first International experience as a family and we loved it we were there for like 3 4 months something like that where can we like do this more and like stay and then Costa Rica had a lot of Pros going for it and here are a couple so proximity to us from Costa Rica back to the States you can get there by lunch if you need to with Shanti being still young at 5 years old there was a desire to be close to the family if there needs to be a quick flight or if they want to come visit us or vice versa for the holidays we booked a spot for a month we just showed up with two backpacks and my surfboards like that's it and it's so easy to just kind of get a place here and we just started we' go back to the States and bring stuff down so like that aspect of like moving here is really not all that hard you know there's some Visa things you can do but here in Costa Rica the Visa they just recently changed it the tourist visa is 6 months so you don't have have to leave for 6 months and if you do hit that 6mth Mark then you just literally go across any border and come right back you could even come back that same day and your Visa renew so if you're on the fence about it like we were we didn't do any residency paperwork or anything like that we just have been on the tourist visa being an extended vacation if you will and definitely I'm glad we didn't go to the hassle because we're leaving soon we'll get to that just wait a little longer I keep putting off the good stuff but just hang in there with us although we didn't get our residency and driver's license in Costa Rica if you have any questions about maybe being an extended tourist or coming to give it a try please comment or email us directly yeah and another reason why this area that we've been living in Tamarindo specifically was appealing because it had everything we kind of needed as a family we started in hako I had been to hako but it was like 10 15 years ago and obviously things changed and so going back as a family we just quickly realized the vibe just wasn't for us especially raising a child and we just rented a car and bounced up to Tamarindo another spot had been to before coming back I was not expecting the growth that has happened but with growth came Community like a lot of xats a lot of new people new restaurants new stores having a child there were many more things that became important to us when choosing a location is to quote stay put for a bit you know there's a medical center there's a 24-hour clinic if need be and schools there's like in this area I'm not even kidding there's like 15 schools that you can choose from it's just like mindblowing we started walking around we rented a place for like a month and we're like this is pretty cool I mean we're walking around seeing people already we just felt like this place we could stay here for a little bit and we had a school picked out for shanty and everything and everything was just kind of falling into place yeah at first at first and for me surfing was such a big part of my life growing up coming back here and being in the bus like I didn't surf for like 4 years and when we lived in Barbados I surfed every day there and been surfing pretty much every day here it's been such a revitalizing aspect of my life being here but this area is kind of weird it's a third world country but you're paying pretty high prices to be here that's one of the cons we'll talk about later let's stay on the pros for a little bit we also really wanted to learn Spanish as a family how's that going babe kid be in no we have picked up conversational Spanish now I will admit we could have put in a lot more effort and be pretty close to fluent by now so Tamarindo primarily is english- speaking when you're at the stores or the restaurants so I believe our Spanish might have been progressing quicker but it's just so easy to to speak English here so before we get into the living expenses like how much we spend on rent and things like that we also want to talk about why we chose to get a place here in town rather than maybe somewhere a little bit cheaper outside of town because there's a big difference there in price and a big difference in lifestyle but let's talk about the lifestyle part of it first it was a must for me to be able to walk everywhere if we want ice cream as a family we walk out our door and we go walk to the ice cream shop if we want to go to the beach I wanted to be able to get the boards and just walk to the shore I really didn't want a car to be a necessity and that was one of my my foot down must be in town just so we can walk everywhere in the states or most other developed countries you're driving everywhere so you never have a chance to see anybody so in that Community Field really gets lost through Transportation driving in a car you go from your house to the store in a car you go to your house to work and like unless you call somebody to meet up you don't see anybody but here walking around we were seeing people all the time like hey it's a nice feeling you're just walking and you know the person who does whatever they're doing and you just say hi the higher cost of living was definitely worth the social aspect and the uplifting of the spirit of just being around people for us you know selfishly I know he had his surfing but I was pretty pumped that there are gyms in the area there's a lot of health conscious restaurants there's an herbal organic health food store so I didn't didn't feel trapped in with limited options so you know the walking it's just all around a place where you you generally feel living a healthier lifestyle so another asset of being here in Costa Rica and in tamoro specifically is that there's lots to do all around you all these different beaches some of them are really beautiful like P patas we have a whole video on that you can watch that as well if you come here definitely check out that place and within minutes or hours be hiking a waterfall or visiting some Des Beach so it really is pretty Central for some like out outward excursions if you're looking for adventure if you watched one of our last videos we said we were going to do a van here it just didn't kind of pan out it's too much risk although I really do want to build a van somewhere and travel like that but Costa Rica just wasn't it so throughout the whole video I've been telling you to wait till the end well we're getting close to the end and now you've you've waited for the juicy stuff cuz we're going to start talking about the cons and why after for us personally being here for 10 months we going to be here for a year in total by the time we leave why we're leaving let's address the first big thing that was pretty shocking to me coming here was the price of everything yes I mean the prices here are stupid honestly so let's get into a breakdown of some of our cost and we live a pretty minimal lifestyle we're not in some luxurious place we eat at home most of the time we found a great deal on rent actually and it was still expensive for us what we were expecting to pay I think I should say actually and we pay $1,400 for a decent little apartment but nothing crazy we signed a year lease on it so that got the price down a lot well I must say that out of all the friends that we have in the same complex we have the the less of the rent so people around us are paying anywhere between like 16 and 2,000 yeah a month in town 2 Grand is a very easy yeah that's like the average I'd say honestly food is also very expensive here you know you're not going out to dinner for anything less than $15 for a single person minimum I don't even know where you'd find that yeah that's like if you're at like a really cheap place yeah so if you're coming here like just expect don't be shocked by how expensive it is cuz we're like it's a third world country it's Costa Rica like you can't even flush your toilet paper you got to put it in the trash bin next to you and the dirt road like the roads are like totally crappy most places and you're paying like American prices to be honest I was more shocked on like the groceries because we do cook at home a lot we are financially aware of food and so we try to you know stay at home but going to the grocery store is my joke is like equivalent to shopping at Whole Foods all of the time and it's not Whole Foods you know you're just getting your Basics no so we will drive out of town hoping for cheaper grocery prices but that was one shocker to me cuz we're good about eating at home but that it hasn't saved us anything living here yeah so like for example for really I'll I'll show this on screen but for like a small thing of cottage cheese $10 a small thing of peanut butter $10 like in these things are normally like $3 in the States you know what I mean so you're talking about a massive markup on most things that are imported you can get veggies and stuff for the same price honestly it's not cheaper than the states because even most of the vegetables are imported here like everything is imported here in Costa Rica it's kind of sad honestly you know it's it's kind of sad to see and that's another part earlier we were talking about you don't need to know Spanish that much they're definitely is culture here in Costa Rica but you're not really going to see as much of it here in there's the culture to us is one of the reasons why we're leaving everybody's super nice don't get me wrong friendly as can be chill life style all these kind of things but there's just so much more vibrant cultures much more better food from other cultures as well rice and beans and chicken is like the staple is like that's like the cultural food here and it's good but it's not that great so overall I don't regret a day here I think it was awesome I learned how to surf woohoo that was cool now it's a part of our whole family cuz Shany and I surf as well as him and despite the cons that we were just talking about Costa Ric is still an amazing country it's beautiful it's beautiful to answer the question would we do it again I don't think I would buy a house yeah we'll come back cuz the friends we've made here it it's family now so if if we're passing by tamarinda will be a pit stop for sure because of the the friends we consider family now the surf the community the real reason why we're leaving drum roll more culture yeah more culture so we have decided to pack up sell all of our stuff here and we're going to bring our backpacks and ourselves over to Europe to start backpacking and volunteering all throughout Europe and really giving Shanty the experience of being helping on farms helping people who are in need and for us just to be of service and continue filming it so guys like And subscribe to our Channel if you like this video please comment your questions below we do also have a link below to buy us a coffee it's just like if you found value from this video you can just pretty much like buy us a coffee it's super easy also I do want to mention this our Costa Rica journey is coming to an end we have valued our time here and we definitely would still suggest coming to give it a try if it's in your desire to do so you won't regret it you can always go back to your home base and start your career over you know what I mean there's always still life to live just take the risk and do it

Channel: Their Happy Trails

Views: 4,398

Keywords: Costa Rica expat life, living in Tamarindo, moving to Costa Rica, expat family, Tamarindo life, Costa Rica living cost, international family travel, expat challenges, Costa Rica pros and cons, Tamarindo beaches, learning Spanish in Costa Rica, Costa Rica surf life, community life in Tamarindo, family life abroad, preparing to move abroad, travel tips Costa Rica, life in Costa Rica, expat advice, Costa Rica travel, leaving Costa Rica

Id: whewN5RX4Ws

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2024